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PBS' 'Summer,' the new jewel in the crown

Robert Bianco
USA TODAY
PBS is forecasting 'Indian Summers' this September. (From left; Amber Rose Revah, Henry-Lloyd Hughes, Julie Walters, Nikesh Patel and Jemima West)

BEVERLY HILLS — PBS hopes it has a new jewel in its crown.

Premiering in September, Indian Summers is a nine-part Masterpiece series set in British-ruled India in the early '30s. It's told from the point of view, not just of the British, but of an Indian family as India works its way to independence.

"My ambition was to try to tell the story as far as I can from both perspectives," says creator Paul Rutman at the Television Critics Association press tour.

Star Nikesh Patel thinks Rutman achieved his goal. "It was the first time that I had read a story set in British India that was as much about the Indians as the Brits, that the Indian characters didn't feel like they were on the periphery looking in."

Summers is set in Simla, a town in the Indian mountains where the British rulers would go to escape the summer heat. The plan, says Rutman, "is to tell the story from 1932 to 1947 over the course of five watershed summers. So we could leapfrog." The leap starts in the second season, which jumps ahead to 1935.

The plan had also been to shoot the show in Simla, where the story is set. Unfortunately, says producer Charlie Pattinson, two problems intervened: Simla is too built-up now, and the long shooting schedule meant there would be no way to escape the monsoons. So they went to Penang in Malaysia.

"They have a very similar history and a large Indian population. It became the ideal location."

As you'd expect, there are both good and bad people in Summers' Simla — and one of the most interesting is Cynthia, a widow who runs the English social club there, and uses it to manipulate the ruling class. She's played by Julie Walters, a two-time Oscar nominee.

"She kind of rules the roost there a bit," says Walters. "People tell her their secrets, they get drunk there. She has huge power that she wouldn't have in England, so part of her struggle is to hold on to that. ... She's in the center of most things, which I like."

Liking the character, Walters says, is one reason she decided to do the show. Why else? The great script. The great experience.

"And the money."

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